For Immediate Release - October 1, 2024
Zahra McDoom, TD Curator of Collections, Museum London
London, ON - Museum London is delighted to welcome Zahra McDoom as the new TD Curator of Collections thanks to support from TD Bank Group (TD) through the TD Ready Commitment.
Zahra will join the team this fall as part of a two-year agreement. This opportunity is designed specifically to amplify diverse voices and support an emerging professional from a community that has been traditionally under-represented in cultural institutions.
In this role, Zahra will undertake work to help the museum continue to enrich programming, make meaningful connections between art, history and community, engage directly with our art and material culture collections, and strengthen relationships.
Zahra is an emerging museum professional of Indo-Caribbean descent and identifies with the 2SLGBTQI+ community. Her research has focused on Black history, histories of racialized communities, performance, gender, and sexuality. Recently, she recorded oral histories with elders from the Black community in London and wrote about the lives of Black Londoners from the early to mid-20th century. Of her practice, Zahra says, “I seek the traces of marginalized histories to tell a different story.”
Zahra holds Master of Arts degrees in Public History, and in Theory and Criticism from Western University, well as a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto. Zahra also holds a Master of Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University and served as a counsellor supporting families and students.
Over the last year Zahra has worked on projects at museums in Southwestern Ontario including Elgin County Museum, Fanshawe Pioneer Village, the Oil Museum of Canada. As a graduate student, Zahra was an intern at Museum London and made notable contributions. As a writer, she has produced texts for Active History, The Caribbean Writer, and the Journal of Caribbean Literature.
We thank TD Bank Group, through the TD Ready Commitment for their support of this position.
"My lived experience and academic work provide me with a strong ability to identify gaps in the historical record and an enhanced ability to build community connections…most of all, I want historically marginalized communities to be present in our cultural and heritage spaces."
"We extend a very warm welcome to Zahra McDoom as she joins our team this fall as TD Curator of Collections. We are grateful to TD for their incredible support to make it happen. Zahra is joining us at a pivotal time for the Museum, and we are eagerly anticipating the opportunities for learning, experimentation, community-building, and change that we’ll bring about together in the days ahead."
"We're thrilled to congratulate Zahra McDoom on being named the new TD Curator of Collections at Museum London. Through our corporate citizenship platform, the TD Ready Commitment, TD is proud to support programs that reflect and amplify the diverse voices of the communities we serve while creating opportunities for arts professionals from communities facing barriers to the sector to grow in their careers. We're excited to see how Zahra's vision and lived experience will contribute to the rich narrative of our shared histories and help shape meaningful cultural experiences for the community."
Museum London is a leading art and history resource that connects communities, inspires change, challenges ways of thinking, and ignites creativity towards a more just world. Located at the forks of the Deshkan Ziibi / Thames River, Museum London sits in a place that has been a site of convergence, exchange, and interconnection for thousands of years on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron.
Grounded in the rich cultural, artistic, and historical legacies of Southwestern Ontario, we co-create, reflect, and interpret ideas and stories rooted here, share them widely, and bring important artistic knowledge from other places to London to benefit local audiences. Through exhibitions, our vast collections of art and artifacts, public and school programs for learners of all ages, and memorable special events, we nurture curiosity, creativity, and empathy, and build community to shape a more vibrant city.
Museum London is funded by the City of London, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario, by generous corporate partners, and many passionate individuals.
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